Missed Translations

by Sopan Deb

Many of my friends brought up in America have similar stories. They might have consulted with their parents about future plans, but it was always ultimately up to them. And this is not to say that all parents in India still demand of their children what my grandparents did. Look at Manvi, whose wedding we would attend in a few days. But choice is a ubiquitous concept for Western children. I don’t mean that in a preachy-rah-rah-let’s-celebrate-America-and-freedom-on-July-4th-with-Lee-Greenwood kind of way. Freedom is great, of course, but it’s different than what I’m referring to. This is about choice: the agency to have the space, independent of familial pressures, to pursue your own fulfillment. It’s unlike anything with which my parents were familiar. After hearing Shyamal’s story, I cherished it a bit more.

  Shyamal did try to take some control of his own destiny, but it took a superhuman effort of his own in defying his family to come to the United States and build himself up from scratch to survive. In many ways, I had started from ahead. For one thing, I was born and brought up in middle-class America. My life has been a struggle to connect, not a struggle to sustain myself. Shyamal and, as I would later find out, Bishakha had to deal with both.

  “I became desperate,” Shyamal said. “People tried to discourage me again and stop my going. I said, ‘No.’” I respected him for this. It’s what I would have done.

  “The steering wheel was in my hand,” Shyamal said.

  In New Jersey, Shyamal set out to look for a life partner to make the loneliness less overwhelming. He put an ad in a newspaper called Bharat Matrimony (Bharat means India), which is now a website that allows you to complete a Soulmate Search™. Shyamal’s ad, which he published in 1977, was in the American version of the paper produced out of New York.

  One of the sample ads on the present-day website reads:

  Telugu Male 28 M.Tech. (IIT) going to US soon Executive in PSU seeks Professional girl Christian / Hindu any Contact: 040-xxx xxxx ( Kannan ) xxx-xxx xxx4. Email:xxxxxxxx@vsnl.com write to Box No. C-xxxx, Indian Express, Lalbaug Industrial Estate, Lalbaug, Mumbai-12.

  Shyamal’s ad was similar: name, age, profession, salary, PO Box number. Responses started coming in immediately. A dozen prospective wives, many of them students, responded.

  “Most of them, I did not like,” Shyamal said. In twenty-first-century parlance, he swiped left. “One person, I met. She was older than me. I didn’t go for it.”

  He put up a second advertisement. Again, several women responded. One was a fellow engineer. Shyamal didn’t take kindly to her. “I’m selective. I expect some characteristics of everybody. If it’s not there, I cannot stay with them. I could not live with them even for a week,” Shyamal said.

  Okay, so maybe he was choosy.

  “So what were you looking for in somebody?” I asked.

  “You don’t know your father at all,” Shyamal said. “I wanted to be with somebody who has some flavor in life, who has some education, some family value, and some professionalism. And at least 60 percent my culture in the sense.”

  “You wanted someone Bengali?” I offered, wondering what the “60 percent” referred to.

  He nodded.

  “It was many things,” he said. “Your life is what you’ve built yourself. Your parents will give you the seed. But you have to build yourself. In that building process, you build your personality. There you have some likes and dislikes. Certain areas you can compromise, other places you cannot.” This was the closest thing I’d ever had to a sex talk with Shyamal.

  At some point, Shyamal received a response to his ad from my grandmother in Toronto on my mother’s side. There was a letter that was written to my father giving Bishakha’s background, with a picture attached. He was impressed by the letter. It matched what he was looking for.

  “I was desperate to get a partner at that time,” Shyamal said. He might have been picky, but his feelings of isolation had made him increasingly forlorn.

  He flew to Toronto, where my mother’s family was living. Shyamal said Bishakha was staying there with her younger brother, Atish, and her mother, Amiya. Bishakha was supporting all three of them by herself.

  “I just liked her,” Shyamal said. “She was everything I wanted in life. And at one point, I said, ‘The last ten years, I’m looking for a girl. It’s the first time I got a girl like you.’”

  But this wasn’t the ending of You’ve Got Mail. You couldn’t hear the UB40 version of “(I Can’t Help) Falling in Love with You” blaring in the distance. There was a catch: To Shyamal’s shock, Bishakha did not know that her mother had reached out to my father about a prospective marriage. He showed up at her family’s door after having spent the money to fly to Toronto, not a cheap flight. It was my grandmother and my uncle Atish who greeted Shyamal. Bishakha didn’t know who he was or why he was there. She had no interest in getting married. Not to Shyamal. Not to anybody else.

  “When she saw me in their house, she realized something was going on,” Shyamal said. “She said nothing.”

  My mother’s silence surprised him. He didn’t know my mother didn’t want to marry him.

  “When I left, I told her, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow, and we should meet again,’” Shyamal said, recalling the end of their first visit.

  My father did, indeed, contact her the next day. The phone call went to Bishakha’s job; she worked as a switchboard operator.

  “She was reluctant to speak to me,” Shyamal said.

  At the urging of Atish and my grandmother, Bishakha met Shyamal for dinner at a restaurant. My father didn’t remember the exact type of food, other than that it was “Western.” Dinner was enjoyable enough, and the next day, Shyamal invited Bishakha to go to Niagara Falls with another couple he was friends with who lived in Toronto. She acquiesced.

  I asked him to describe that trip, and, in response, my father pointed to Wesley and me. “Just like you are enjoying her company. Same almost. Same magnitude,” he said of his trip to Niagara Falls.

  “Hopefully not quite like that,” I quipped.

  The jaunt went reasonably well, even though my mother still didn’t want to get married. The stakes were high: Niagara Falls was Shyamal’s chance to win my mother over. It was their first instance of spending extended time together. For Shyamal in particular, he wasn’t going to be lonely for a weekend and perhaps for a lifetime. The trip was probably the first and last time my parents were happy together.

  Before I quizzed more, Shyamal began to grow weary of the questioning.

  “Do I have to tell you about all these things?” Shyamal said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Why?” Shyamal said. His voice became harder.

  “Because it’s important to me,” I said.

  “Why?” he repeated.

  “Why is it important to me? Because it’s important to me,” I answered parsimoniously. It was the only way I knew how to handle tense conversations, aside from cracking jokes.

  “You’re writing a book,” Shyamal said.

  “The book is important to me and listening to this conversation is important to me,” I said. My frustration was growing.

  “Do I have to meet all your demands, even though you’re my dearest son?” Shyamal said.

  “Yes, for this particular case, yes. It’s important to me,” I said.

  “Why is it important to you?” Shyamal asked for a third time.

  “Because it’s important to me,” I growled. “I came all the way here.”

  “You did not come to write a book. You came to see me,” Shyamal said. You could almost see that on the tip of his tongue, he wanted to add, “Right?” But he didn’t say it. Maybe he thought I’d say no. But I was determined. I wanted to be able to have a regular conversation with my father so badly. I didn’t want the artificial barriers anymore. I wanted explanations. I wanted something real.

  “Do you understand that normal families are able to talk about these things?” I exploded. Wesley was silent this whole time.

  “I’ve never sa
id this to anybody,” Shyamal said. We were both stubborn.

  “Do you understand that these are the kinds of things I need to know about?” I said.

  “No, you do not,” Shyamal said. “Nobody in the world understood what was going through my mind.”

  “I’m trying to understand it!” I said. “You telling me basics isn’t informative or helpful to me at all.”

  I was being unreasonable; he didn’t actually owe me every part of himself. He was trying to be informative, to shed light on episodes I had never heard of. It should have been enough.

  “On the whole, we liked each other. We got married. That’s it,” Shyamal said. I think, in his own way, he was trying not to say hurtful things about Bishakha.

  “Stop saying that!” I said, nearly shouting. “That’s not it. My childhood was miserable. Do you understand that?”

  “I do,” Shyamal said, without a second’s hesitation.

  “Do you understand how unhappy my brother and I were growing up in that household?” I said. I could feel my blood boiling. Thirty years of anger were pouring out of me, and I couldn’t do anything but watch it.

  “Yes,” Shyamal said.

  “Do you know how little I know about you and Mom?” I said.

  “Yes, I know that,” Shyamal said.

  “I need to understand how this happened,” I said. “I need to know everything.”

  “As a father, did I ever neglect you?” Shyamal asked. “Were you deprived of any love from your father within his human capacity? From my side, did I leave any stone unturned from any aspect as a father?”

  “I would say yes,” I answered. Did I mean it? I was letting years of exasperation seep out. “I have gone my whole life without answers to basic questions.” I pounded the table. “Now it’s your turn. Now you have to answer them. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t care that I own this flat. You need to answer questions. Questions that you’re not going to be around too much longer to answer.”

  These were hurtful things for me to say, but Shyamal sat there, occasionally clenching his fists but otherwise expressionless. There was a tinge of sadness in his face. He didn’t try to interrupt or look away. He was a willing punching bag for my verbal swings, encouraging me without saying a word. He wasn’t angry, just tired and resigned. The coffee cup in front of him was empty. But I wasn’t done.

  “And I’m telling you right now, I’m not gonna be like that with my kids, okay?” I said. “I will not. I’m not gonna hold things back from them, the way that you and Mom have with my brother and me, okay? I don’t want the relationship with us to be the relationship that you had with your father, okay? We need to be able to talk about this stuff, it’s important. You need to be open right now.”

  And to Shyamal’s credit, he had been somewhat open before I berated him. But now, something had changed between us. We both knew it. I had never seen my father look this vulnerable or stung in my life. And we hadn’t even covered the most difficult topic yet.

  Many of his choices still left me perplexed. Right from their wedding day in 1977, a few months after they met, there was simmering hostility. Their ceremony was a small one in New York, in front of about fifty guests. Shyamal began changing jobs which meant changing states. First there was a move to Florida. While they were there, Sattik was born, in 1979. Then came moves to Virginia and Massachusetts.

  I came in 1988. In the early 1990s, the Deb family moved back to New Jersey, when I was about three. Shyamal, who already thought of himself as discerning, thought Bishakha was cold and lacked ambition. Neither felt they could have the intelligent conversations the other desired out of a life partner. Bishakha, who hadn’t wanted to get married in the first place, sank into a depression that slowly got worse as the marriage went on. They each viewed the other as domineering, demanding, and unable to empathize.

  This dynamic always existed. So there was an obvious and rather existential question I had to pose: “Why did you decide to have a second child if things were already bad?”

  “I was very happy when you were born,” Shyamal said.

  “I believe you, but—” I began to answer, but he interrupted.

  “No. I was very happy when you were born. Any father in the world will love their children,” Shyamal said. “When you were born, there was a difference of nine years between the two of you: 1979 and 1988. I loved both of you in the deepest core of my heart. Life is not about mathematics. It can happen to anybody. When you came, I was very happy to see you.”

  “I’m not saying you didn’t love me as a kid. When I was conceived, was I planned?” I said. Now we were literally having a sex talk.

  “Hard to say,” Shyamal said. He looked up at the ceiling and thought some more. He repeated it again. Shyamal said they were always planning on having a second child, but it was unclear whether my mother’s health would allow it. But I also wasn’t sure my father understood the question. For my parents, having children wasn’t even a decision. It was just something they were supposed to do. It’s what their family members would’ve done. I was born of two parents who had limited control over their futures growing up but who chose to have me, in spite of the contempt they had for one another. And my father couldn’t even explain why.

  Given how unhealthy they were together, was it responsible for them to have a second child? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I exist. But should I?

  Eleven

  “My dearest son, I have no regret.”

  When I was in elementary school, I became obsessed with professional wrestling. I had to watch in secret though, because I knew my parents wouldn’t approve of me idolizing oiled-up grown men who fake-hit each other with metal chairs. My favorite performer was this guy Paul Wight, better known today as Big Show. Wight is less a guy and more the human manifestation of an oil tanker, at one point in his career clocking in at more than four hundred pounds. Every time he entered the ring, his opponents would quake with fear (or, you know, pretend to). A single punch from him would cartoonishly launch opponents to the other side of the ring. And if they weren’t being slammed to the canvas, Big Show would headbutt them to another dimension.

  At home, I used to take multiple pillows, stuff them inside each other, and create dummies to bodyslam. I created elaborate scenarios where I would “fight” A-list wrestlers like Kane, the Undertaker, and my favorite, Big Show. My finishing move was “the Hellraiser,” which involved putting a pillow in a headlock, lifting it up over my right shoulder, and then piledriving it into the mat, which was, in this case, my bed.

  I didn’t have wrestling tights, so I used to run around in only my underwear. It was a bizarre sight for both of my parents, who knew little about half-naked men fake-fighting each other as a form of entertainment, or that I even watched them. I composed my own theme song on the keyboard, which was not bad, actually, and I delivered promos with an imaginary microphone.

  “HEY BIG SHOW! WHEN SOPAN DEB GETS YOU IN THE RING, HE’S GOING TO RAIIIISEEEE SOMEEEE HELLLL!”

  I gravitated to performers like Big Show because he was everything I wasn’t. I was scrawny and afraid of actual physical confrontations. Hey, you would be too if you were my size. Put me against someone with a heartbeat? I’m the guy seeing my life flash in front of my eyes as Big Show enters the ring. No more raising hell for me.

  I have, however, been in one physical altercation in my life that didn’t involve my parents. It was during eighth grade, that year where my mother had locked herself in her room and it was just Shyamal taking care of me. There was this one classmate I had—we’ll call him Gary—who was not well liked by anybody. He was always making inappropriate and demeaning comments to those around him. Gary was troubled and not well adjusted at an already difficult age for boys. He was disruptive in class, and his frequent antics seemed to come from a place of malice. I’m almost two decades older now, and in hindsight, it’s clear Gary was battling some demons that even he didn’t understand at the time. Come to think of it, I was
too.

  One morning, we were milling around in the classroom waiting for the first class of the day to start. I was in the back of the room doing something, maybe playing on the computer, when Gary made some unprovoked comment toward me. It was something derogatory about a turban. I didn’t hear him at first, but he repeated it. This was shortly after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Every now and then, some other students would say it was my relatives who flew a plane into the World Trade Center.

  I cannot say this enough: I was scrawny. I never picked fights. But something came over me in this moment. The backdrop of my home life had put me in such an angry place. And manliness was very much a topic of discussion among the cool kids. I’d hear classmates talk with great admiration about fights that others got into and the toughness with which they fought. I was uncool but desired very much to be the opposite. In this moment, I thought that getting into a fight would raise my status.

  I walked to the front of the classroom, where Gary was standing, and I clocked him in the face. A right hook to his left cheek. My classmates were stunned. Gary, after initially falling backward over a chair, was also stunned. I stared at my fists as if a comic book movie villain had taken control of them.

  Gary ran out of the classroom to tell a teacher, and I was immediately taken to a vice principal’s office, where I offered my side of the story. Our reputations were weighed: I had never been in a fight in school, but Gary had. While I was known for acting up in class, I had great grades. Gary didn’t. It was believable that Gary was the instigator.

  When the decision was made to suspend me for two days and him for at least a couple more, maybe a week, the vice principal called Shyamal to tell him what happened and that he had to come pick me up from school. My father would have to leave work early. Remember how I never called my parents to tell them I had been arrested while covering Trump? Let me tell you: You definitely don’t want to be the brown kid who calls his parents to tell them about a school suspension. Ever.

  In Shyamal’s car we were silent the entire ride. He didn’t ask what happened, and I didn’t try to explain. I was steeling myself to be told what a disappointment I was. How I would never get into college. How a school suspension is the equivalent of a felony. But there were no words, not even from the radio.